I do architectural design and SU is not the answer to every problem. If you're doing multi-million dollar designs, heck, spend a couple bucks and use programs that are easier and more powerful. Sure, it can be fun to try to learn and navigate your way through the program, but give me my architectural design software with ease and simplicity and powerful photo-realistic images in a fraction of the time of SU. Play with free. Work with paid for programs.
I've seen plenty of multi-million dollar designs at major firms that started in SketchUp (I work as a freelance architectural renderer, and am often handed said SketchUp files as part of my reference material). Yes, at some point you have to make a construction set and/or BIM, which SketchUp is not capable of, and when things start getting really detailed and the major strokes are locked down you probably want to switch to CAD or Revit, but for concept development, and to a lesser extent design development, SketchUp has capabilities that are unmatched for quickly trying out and modifying concepts.
Free is not always better (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Free is not always better (Score:2)